Cycles of Prejudice: Explicit Appeals in the Donald Trump Era

• In Event: The Political Psychology of Race and Racial Attitudes

Abstract

The 2016 U.S. election saw an explosion of explicitly anti-Muslim messages that were aimed at activating Islamophobic sentiments. Racial Priming Theory suggests that these explicitly prejudicial messages should be rejected by the public. However, more recent literature has challenged this theory, finding that the distinction between implicit and explicit appeals may have declined as racial norms have shifted (Valentino et al. 2017). What has caused the rise in explicit prejudice? Further, what responses do these appeals illicit from the American public? I identify four related shifts that help explain the rise of explicit prejudice; a rise in white identity, a heightened racial environment, the conclusion of the partisan realignment, and elite activation of prejudice. I then develop a theory of differential norms to suggest that norms of equality have developed differently for racial/ethnic groups based on processes of racialization, social movement success, and international pressure. A series of survey experiments lend credence to this argument by indicating that explicitly anti-Muslim appeals are more acceptable to the public than explicitly anti-Black or anti-LGBT appeals. Specifically, explicitly anti-Muslim messages increase support for Republican candidates and policies such as the Muslim travel ban. However, explicitly anti-Black appeals elicit weaker backlash to candidates and policies than in previous studies. The findings suggest that explicit appeals to prejudice are increasingly palatable to the public, and that this is particularly true of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Author

• Maneesh Arora, University of California, Irvine